Rent

In 1988 playwright Billy Aronson wanted to adapt Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème from it’s courtly setting to the grime and grit of modern New York City. Musical theatre legend Ira Weltzman introduced Aronson to playwright/composer Johnathan Larson to collaborate on the project, and Larson then adapted Aronson’s concept to his own experience of living with a rotating cast of roommates in SoHo. Eventually, the story moved to the rough and tumble of the East Village.

Rent was born.

The rock ‘n’ roll musical about a year in the lives of seven struggling young artists trying to make a go of it under the ever-present spectre of HIV/AIDS was a massive hit. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1996, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score and ran continuously for 12 years on Broadway, spinning off numerous national tours, international productions and a 2005 film featuring many of the original cast.

Plus, the show arrived on the heels of a tragedy that has become part of its history. Early in the morning of Rent’s preview off-Broadway performance, Larson died suddenly. He would receive a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his creation.

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As the Rent 20th Anniversary Tour hits the road, choreographer Marlies Yearby reflected on how the show’s story and place play out in the present day.

“Right now, I think that Rent is a wonderful message of be who you are and learn to accept who we are across the different lines that have been drawn between ourselves and that society has drawn,” said Yearby.

“Today, we live in a time where who we are and the differences between us are really being spoken about, and Rent celebrates who we are as individuals and as a collection of people. It exudes a message of love and that is needed more than ever today.”

Yearby notes that people are still dying of HIV/AIDS, so that story still needs to be told, too.

Rent’s characters include Mark Cohen, a struggling Jewish-American documentary filmmaker and roommate of Roger Davis, an HIV-positive ex-junkie musician who has seen better days. Then there is Angel Dumott Schunard, a drag queen with AIDS who is the love interest of AIDS-positive anarchist professor Tom Collins, who was also a roommate of Mark and Roger.

“It’s also a celebration of new beginnings, trying it out again and re-approaching life, which happens to the characters of Mark, Roger and even Angel,” Yearby said. “When he makes the choice of how he wants to die and Collins takes him home, it celebrates the decision.

“How their characters rub up against each other is an interesting juxtaposition between a lifestyle and identity as you get these Bohemian ideals running up against hard-nosed business and money making,” she said.

“That’s a reality in any contemporary urban centre where you have original residents and creative communities coming up against developers and gentrification. Even Mimi, how she survives and makes a living with her body, is a question of identity and lifestyle.”

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The landscape in Rent is pretty bleak. It’s a fact that hasn’t been missed by the many parodies of the show that have followed in its stead. From Family Guy to the Simpsons, the show has been the brunt of gags. But nowhere did it get more parodied than in Team America World Police. The puppet film from the creators of South Park included a big scene from a hit musical called Lease, complete with a show-stopping finale titled Everyone Has AIDS!

Yearby says that the backlash proves that the show has the kind of enduring legacy.

“Anytime that you have difference on the stage, a stage that is diverse in race, gender and cultures as this show is, you are going to have reaction,” she said.

“When you go to Rent, you are immediately dropped into a world that is full of … the others. And it celebrates and accepts them — and that isn’t what has happened in the history of America, which is historically built upon the non-acceptance of others.”

Having the characters boldly being themselves on stage was a potent statement in the day and one that Yearby believes still resonates, perhaps now more than ever.

“There are always going to be those communities of people that do not accept same-sex relationships, that don’t agree with black people that are intelligent, or with women sticking out and being who they want to be at the moment,” she said.

“But, at the same time, I have to believe that there are also communities who uphold that celebration of the lives and rights of others. I’ve had people come up to me, 13 year-olds in high school, telling me how Rent changed their lives, and that’s an amazing thing and it’s how change occurs.”

Yearby says that the team that came together around Larson to build the original production was of a singular mind in making sure the show delivered its message of celebration and acceptance to the fullest.

Yearby’s Rent choreography was nominated for an award at the 50th Annual Tony Awards, but lost out to Savion Glover’s equally game-changing Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk. She says that the goal in her work was to really reflect the character’s emotional states and make their movement realistic.

“When Jonathan approached me, he noted that there was an element of authenticity in my work which he really wanted me to bring to Rent, which was exactly the right chord to hit with me,” Yearby said.

“He had a deep love for dance, and understood the choreographic process as similar to writing for the first time and creating in the room. I don’t use typical or standard dance steps but prefer to evolve the movements from gestures or words, so Rent was really about a lot of hips, shoulders, eye contact and touches.”

Yearby said that when she was nominated for the Tony, the committee noted all of the additional subtle movements that Yearby brought to director Michael Greif’s conceptual framework. Coming from the New York City Downtown arts scene, Yearby was familiar with the “slight little isms” that informed the movement vocabulary of the area. For the 20th tour, she says you’ll see even more of those lines being drawn between the characters.